Roland Delorme Threw House Party to Raise Funds for “The Ultimate Fighter 14”

Who is Roland Delorme? In addition to being the bantamweight pictured above, the Canadian’s also a contestant on “The Ultimate Fighter 14” that will be providing exclusive weekly blogs for 5thRound.com. Here’s his intro piece. We’ll be following up with “Stunning’s” recap of the show’s second episode later today.

“Hello, my name is Roland Delorme and I’m a current cast member of “The Ultimate Fighter 14.” I’ve been invited to share an inside look of the making, feuds and life inside the TUF house.

I’ll start by giving you a quick story of how I came to be on the show. It started with a link on my Facebook page from a friend who read that the UFC was holding tryouts for the next season of TUF, which was gonna be featherweights and bantamweights. Right away, I knew I had to go. I was gonna beg, borrow and steal if I had to.

Not having any money, my friend and I decided to have a party and charge $10 at the door. Initially I was hoping to make half of what I needed to go to New Jersey, but with all my friends, family and training partners I did much better than expected. I was humbled by the support I got.

So I get to Jersey a week later and show up at the venue an hour before it starts. Already there are 200 fighters in line, a real who’s who of bantamweights and featherweights from across the country and world. I finally register and weigh-in and get ready for the grappling portion. Dana White is paying $100 a submission and I want that money. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to get a sub but I did enough to get noticed, and let me tell you, waiting for Dana to say your name to proceed to the next level is nerve-racking.

Second portion was striking and I seemed to do well. Now the final stage was the interview with the producers and this was the most important part. You have two minutes to be memorable, and before we even get started, the producers were saying how much they hate Canadians so I knew I had to do something. I just didn’t know what.

So I figured, ‘You know what? I got nothing to lose and everything to gain.’ So I walked in there and just started calling him a douche bag. They’re either gonna love me or hate me, but at least they’ll remember me. It must have worked cause two weeks later they called me to go to Las Vegas for the second round of cuts, and finally two months later I got the call I was praying for – the invite to get in the house, but I knew that was only the beginning. I still had to fight to get in.

Once I was in Vegas, I was ready to fight. They put me up at the Palace Station Casino Hotel and wasn’t allowed to leave the room. Even just to go down the hall to get a pop I needed an escort. Instantly, I felt imprisoned and just paced in the room for a day-and-a-half thinking about the biggest fight of my life, on the biggest show in the world. You could cut the tension with a knife in the warm up room. All that nervous energy, everybody knows what’s at stake. It’s a life changing event and it was win or die trying.

Fight time came and I was strangely calm walking out of the Mandalay Bay into an empty arena. It was a strange experience. Usually you can feed off the crowed, but now the only people in the room was Dana, Jason “Mayhem” Miller and Michael Bisping. I wasn’t gonna disappoint.

The fight starts and he shoots for a single-leg. I wasn’t expecting him to try to take me down right away, so he caught me off guard. I get a under-hook and we begin to stand up. When we separate, I decide to use my jab to find my range and try catch him coming in. Sure enough, he shoots again and I catch him with a right.

I think I stunned him a bit cause he seemed to pause for a second and I used it to control one of his arms with my left while I elbowed him with my right. He doesn’t like the elbows and stands up into a kimura. We spin for a bit until I sweep him into a arm bar and then transition into a triangle choke. Before I knew it, it was over and I couldn’t be happier.”